I graduated from Ohio University in 2011 with a B.A. in Linguistics with a minor in Japanese. Nearly half of my time enrolled at Ohio was spent studying at Chubu University near Nagoya, Japan. I plan eventually to go to graduate school for foreign language education, to become certified to teach Japanese at the secondary level.

In the mean time, however, I program (primarily in PHP and SQL). I also recently began working as a freelance Japanese-to-English translator, though I've translated anime and manga as a hobby in the past.

Word for someone who collects diceI believe this refers to a personal who physically collects dice, as part of the game of Craps, rather than someone who collects dice as a hobby.

Jun21

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“tag question” vs. “question tag”@Pacerier As I parse it, "question tag" refers to the "tag portion of a question", while "tag question" refers to the "question which utilizes a tag" -- like I said, the nuance is slightly different, but ultimately they refer to essentially the same thing. One has slightly more emphasis on one part, and one has slightly more emphasis on the other. This is true of many, if not nearly all, pairs of synonyms.

What is the difference between “I've been to China” and “I've gone to China”?I disagree with the meaning of "gone." Googlesearches suggest that "He's gone to China" in the sense of He is still there is not "has gone," but rather "is gone." It further suggests that "has gone" is used almost exclusively (except when used figuratively, e.g. "gone to great lengths") to have a generally equivalent meaning to this construction with "been." Also, in your final example, "I was in China" would likely almost universally be the preferred response.

Jun20

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What does the door do?@psmears I would argue that it is not taking the place of do, but rather does what, because What does he do all day? is, prior to wh-movement, He does what all day. "Answer" would only be considered grammatical on a misparsing of the underlying structure.